In a global economy, which facilitates the trans-boundary movement of commercial goods, there is an increasing need, from the side of tax authorities and brand owners, for methods allowing to control the genuine nature of merchandise.
In the particular case of bulk products, such as distilled alcoholic beverages, perfumes, medical preparations, and the like, most counterfeiting is actually performed by replacement or adulteration of the original contents, while recycling original packaging. Bulk products or bulk materials, in general, are divided solid or liquid materials which are handled by volume or by weight.
Material-based security solutions (overt and covert), incorporated into inks and applied through various printing processes, efficiently allow to distinguish genuine packaging from counterfeit one. However, a genuine packaging alone is no warranty by itself for that the product content is genuine too.
Product adulteration, i.e. the ‘dilution’ of a genuine product with a low-grade counterfeits is hereby of particular concern. For example, a distilled alcoholic beverage, for which the taxes have been paid, might be subsequently diluted to a certain extent with an alcoholic ‘back-yard’-product, manufactured out of tax. Such adulteration causes important losses to the state and can also have consequences to public health, in case where the ‘back-yard’ alcohol of poor quality contains larger amounts of methanol and/or other toxic contaminants.